


Remove Dick Jokes Before Submitting Report

by Mosca



Category: Limitless (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Dick Jokes, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5495417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rebecca gets Brian a case she knows he'll love. It'll be worth it just for the diorama.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remove Dick Jokes Before Submitting Report

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neonhummingbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonhummingbird/gifts).



> Thanks for the prompt, neonhummingbird! It was a delight to pinch hit for you.
> 
> Thanks also to my top secret beta reader, who stepped in graciously on a short deadline.
> 
> This is set after "This is Your Brian on Drugs" (the last episode that aired before I wrote this) but contains no major spoilers. It contains canon-consistent lowbrow humor.

For most of the morning briefing, Rebecca retained no important information, too giddy with the mental image of Brian finding out about their next case. Naz hadn’t wanted to assign it to him, arguing that there was no reason to encourage Brian by giving him cases that he would immediately turn into a joke. Rebecca had replied that the best way to motivate Brian was to give him an easy target for juvenile humor. To her surprise, the gambit had worked, and now she and Brian were responsible for solving the Penis Pill Murders of 2015. 

Rebecca was sure Brian would come up with a funnier name, but it would do for now. For most of her life, people had teased her about having no sense of humor, but by FBI standards, she was hilarious. Brian kept reminding her of that, and once she’d realized he intended it as one of his highest possible compliments, she’d begun to take pride in it.

She skipped into his office to share the news. He was listening to a voice recording in a language she couldn’t identify and building a structure out of coffee stirrers and gum. Multitasking put an expression of deep concentration on his face, at odds in its seriousness with his t-shirt and scruffy beard. “Morning,” she said, hoping she’d startle him.

He didn’t even look up. Gingerly, he let go of the coffee stirrer he’d been adjusting, and he paused the recording. “Naz has me reviewing interviews with a confidential informant from a weapons smuggling ring, to see if there’s anything the Farsi translators missed,” Brian said. “Which they did, of course, because they’re going for linguistic accuracy, not emotional nuance. But it’s hard to listen to days and days of audio recordings and not do something with my hands, so I’m building a replica of the machine gun stockpile they may or may not be describing.”

“Didn’t Naz say she’d give you any diorama-building materials you needed, if you promised to stop raiding the break room?” Rebecca said.

“Yep. Check out my jumbo box of coffee stirrers and value pack of gum, in the delicious but discontinued key lime pie flavor.”

“Well, you’re going to have to set aside your arsenal, because we have a new assignment,” Rebecca said. She couldn’t bury her merriment completely, and she resigned herself to letting Brian pick up on it.

“It might not be an arsenal. The more I build, the more it really does look like the storage unit is full of Fourth of July fireworks. Which are still illegal in the state of New York, but way less likely to indicate the presence of a terrorist cell in Schenectady.” He finally looked up at her, as if confirming that she had a stupid smile on her face. “What humiliating task do you have for me today?”

Rebecca drew in a breath, hoping she could get through the summary with a straight face. “We’re investigating a penis enlargement pill distributor,” she said. So far, so good. “The pill does not, as far as we can tell, actually enlarge penises, but it has been linked to at least forty cases of stroke or aneurysm, including three deaths.” 

Brian snickered.

“Naz wanted to keep you on the Farsi project, but I argued that you’d never forgive us for refusing to bring you in on a giant dick joke.” Rebecca was still managing not to laugh. 

“You bargained with Naz to get me a dick joke case?” Brian beamed. “You really _do_ care.”

“You’re welcome,” Rebecca said. “It’s actually a tough one to crack. The distributor is buried under a mountain of shell companies and DBAs. We need to identify who’s distributing the pills and who their supplier is, and to determine whether the pills are being illegally imported, which is likely. Plus, we have to generate a customer list so we can warn people and minimize further harm.”

Brian cracked his knuckles. “So, lots of needles in haystacks, extrapolation, and password busting.”

“Pretty much,” Rebecca said. “Have fun.”

“It’s a hard task,” Brian said. “But I think I can stand up and plow through it.”

They weren’t even good puns, but the dam broke. What began with a snort turned into a belly laugh, and soon, Rebecca had doubled over with laughter. 

“There,” Brian said. “You feel better now, don’t you?”

“I’ve been holding it in for _hours,_ ” she admitted, recovering.

“That’s how I know you’re not a robot,” Brian said. “Although if I did build a superintelligent robot, I think the first thing I’d teach it to do was laugh at my jokes. Well, maybe not the first thing. But it’d be high on the list.”

“Please tell me you’ll hold off on the robot designs until you’ve solved this one,” Rebecca said.

Brian held up his hands guiltlessly. “I’m all business until the NZT wears off. Can you do one thing for me, though?”

“If I say yes, I’ll only encourage you,” Rebecca said.

“There’s one thing you can legitimately do better than I can,” he said. “You mentioned that the guys who bought the pills need to be warned of the danger, and that probably needs to happen before the humorless goons in Communications can approve an official public notice. So you should write it instead.”

Rebecca shook her head emphatically.

“You’ll be great,” he said. “Who here has more experience in getting a fuck-up to take things seriously?”

No matter how she looked at it, that was a compliment, laden with affection. Why did it bother her so much that Brian liked her? Maybe it was because the things he seemed to enjoy the most about her were the things she tried to hide or longed to change. Her whimsy, her irony, the fact that she understood difficult concepts better when they were illustrated in arrays of ribbon and Froot Loops. “Thank you,” she said.

“How soon does Naz need preliminary findings?” Brian asked. His eyes seemed far away, like he was already using most of his mind to perform calculations.

“End of the day,” Rebecca said. “And if your presentation doesn’t make Boyle giggle uncontrollably, I’ll be very disappointed.”

“Challenge accepted,” Brian said.

*

By the end of the day, Brian had identified the distributor, tracking the business to a two-man operation in an office building in New Jersey. He’d also narrowed the search down to four possible suppliers, but with the distributors in custody, he probably wouldn’t have to deduce any further. Brian illustrated his process with a PowerPoint presentation that featured clip art of an anthropomorphized condom and a dog in a banana suit. 

Boyle managed to hold it together until the grand finale, which involved a can of silly string. Brian referred to it as the climax. Even Naz cracked a smile.

As the team dispersed, Rebecca hung behind, figuring Brian would want a well-deserved high-five. “Mike came through with a six-pack of silly string,” Brian said. “‘In case you need it for future missions.’” After an uncannily accurate imitation of Mike’s voice, Brian switched back to his own. “I think we’re really starting to bond.”

“He’s accepted that you’re here for the long haul,” Rebecca said. “All of them have. The longer you’re here, the more chances you’ll get to put your real talents to use. That’s how the FBI works: you start out wherever they dump you, and as things progress, you’re slotted into a more and more specific role. Not every day will be a dick joke, but the longer you stay, the more often you’ll get cases that appeal to you.”

He nodded. Rebecca hoped he’d be able to stick around until he realized that he’d be a great investigator even without the NZT, that he had the instincts and the out-of-the-box logic. Until then, she knew he’d demur whenever she treated him like a member of the team rather than like a burden.

“I saw what you did with the public notification,” Brian said. “Smart to put it on Reddit and 4Chan.”

“It seemed like the kind of move you’d make,” Rebecca said. 

He got quiet again, taking that in. “But it’s the kind of move you’d make, too.”


End file.
